


Craigslist Is Totally Good For Something After All

by Brenda



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Fake Science, First Meetings, For Science!, Gen, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/pseuds/Brenda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy just wanted to find a nice off-campus place to crash with a roommate who wouldn't drive her crazy or steal her shit.  Which, of course, meant she'd find herself playing chauffeur to a possibly slightly crazy lady scientist instead.  At least her life wasn't boring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Craigslist Is Totally Good For Something After All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [resistate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/gifts).



> Set pre-Thor. All apologies to any actual astrophysicists reading this, because I pretty much hand-waved all of the science in it based on years of watching Star Trek.

Darcy looked down at her phone again to make sure she had the right address, then back up at the abandoned-looking diner maybe in a former life thing. Building. Whatever. The important thing was what it _wasn't_ \- which was an apartment building. Specifically the apartment building featuring a two-bedroom place with a quote single female looking for same to share rent and living expenses unquote.

Shame about the address screw up, too. The deal had seemed pretty sweet.

"Ah, well, if it _looks_ too good to be true, it probably is. Rule of Griffin," she reminded herself, tucking a flyaway strand of dark hair back under her knit cap. Griffin being one of her exes – the one who'd looked like an Abercrombie  & Fitch model and sounded like Prince Harry and said all the right things in the beginning, but that hadn't lasted long. And, after more than one broken promise _and_ finding out he'd been screwing her study partner in her Constitutional Law class, neither had Darcy.

Back to the old drawing board, then. Or, in this case, Craigslist. Because the last thing she wanted was to have to move back into a dorm. She still had nightmares about the teeny tiny room she'd been forced into sharing her freshman year – the entire building had smelled like cheap perfume and sweaty socks and the girl she'd been forced to room with had some serious food hoarding issues. No way she was subjecting herself to that again. Or to the horrors of communal showers.

She didn't have many ironclad standards (or many standards at all, really), but when it came to her ladyparts, she refused to budge.

She'd just turned to head back to her car when the front door to the diner-thing-place banged open.

Darcy pivoted. A petite brunette wearing jeans frayed at the hems and a sweater at least two sizes too big, was standing in the open doorway. She had the sort of manic look about her that suggested someone who'd gone at least the last two days with no real sleep. A look Darcy knew full well around finals.

"Hey, can you drive a stick?" the girl ( _woman_ , Darcy silently corrected, because she was an enlightened and empowered person who knew the value of using the right words, well, sometimes) asked as she slung a laptop bag over her shoulder.

"Yeeeeees?" Darcy replied, with a raised eyebrow. "My cousin Rita taught me when I was, like, 14. I used to drive her home from bars." Rita had been – still was – a bit of a lush. But in a cool, not pathetic, sort of way.

"Great, here." A set of keys came flying Darcy's way. She caught them out of pure self defense. 

"Um..."

"Come on, we've only got fifteen minutes before the next event happens if my calculations are correct, and I need to update my model numbers and why aren't you in the Jeep already, oh, and can you work a Geiger counter, it's okay if you can't, but it would really help..."

Darcy stared for a second, then the steady stream of words became so much background noise. She was clearly dealing with a Crazy Scientist Einstein Type. Darcy recognized the signs. One of her exes (not Griffin, but Jason of the super nice ass and a box of rocks for brains) had a crazy scientist best friend who probably could have recited all of Newton's Laws or do complex calculations in his head, but forgot to wear pants more often than not and had to be reminded to eat. But he was a nice guy for all that, and this wasn't the first time Darcy'd been asked to do something a little weird upon first meeting someone, so whatever, carpe diem, it was all good by her.

So she shrugged and got in the driver's seat and waited while lady genius crazy person climbed in next to her and fired up her laptop while giving rapid-fire directions. Good thing Darcy took direction well (and yes, that _is_ what she said, she owned her kinks, thank you very much.)

She was also pretty proud of herself for waiting a full two minutes in silence for the other chick to introduce herself. (She knew better than to expect social niceties from a person who'd basically ordered her to play chauffeur, she really did, but she figured there wasn't any harm in giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Her mom was constantly telling her she trusted people too much. Her record with men was pretty much a dead giveaway that her mom was totally correct.) 

"I'm Darcy, by the way," she finally said, after she figured enough time had passed by.

"Hmmm?" Big brown eyes, framed by the longest lashes Darcy had ever seen on a real, live person ( _so_ completely not fair, really, Darcy bet she didn't even have to use mascara), blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

"My name," Darcy supplied, swerving neatly to miss a pothole in the middle of the road. "It's Darcy. Darcy Lewis."

"Oh, um. I'm Jane. Dr. Jane Foster." Jane stuck out a hand, then seemed to think the better of it (smart, since Darcy was driving and all), and put it back on her keyboard. "Sorry, I tend to...well, manners and politeness and all that sort of fly out the window when I'm concentrating. Which is kind of all the time."

"And why am I not surprised to hear that?" Darcy muttered to herself, then covered it by flashing a bright smile Jane's way. "No problem. I'm plenty social enough for, like, ten people. So, what's your story?"

Once again Jane looked up from her screen looking adorably lost. "Story?"

"Yeah, what's your deal? Me, I'm 22, single and staying that way thank you very much, senior at UNM on the five year program on account of fucking off most of my freshman year going to parties and not class, double majoring in Polysci and French, although I'm not sure why I chose French, it's not like there's a practical use for it, unlike Spanish, which would have been super helpful to know the last four years –"

"I'm an astrophysicist," Jane cut in, when Darcy drew a breath. "Just got my doctorate in it, in fact. It's, um, my third."

"Third degree?"

"Third doctorate."

"Huh." Darcy glanced at Jane again, quickly taking in the youthful face and bod. "No offense, but you don't look old enough to have _one_ doctorate."

"I sort of earned the first two before I was 26?" Jane offered, with the most apologetic shrug known to man. Darcy had no idea why she was so embarrassed about it. If she was housing those kinds of brains, she'd totally be using her powers for evil and taking over the world or at least a small corner of it or something. Which was probably why she _didn't_ have smarts like that. Clearly Mother Nature knew what she was doing.

"No shit?"

"And I'm older than I look," Jane added, with another apologetic shrug, which was just silly, because who needed to apologize for looking younger than their years. There were entire billion dollar industries devoted to that very cause.

"How old's that?" Darcy asked, because now she was curious.

"30."

Seriously impressed. "Wow, that's amazing. What's your skin care regimen because your face is, like, flawless?" Darcy's was oily and prone to breaking out at the very first sign of moisture, which, thankfully, wasn't too much of an issue in New Mexico.

"Uh, soap and a wash cloth," Jane offered, because of course she was a super cute super smart girl with naturally perfect skin, then pointed. "Oh, turn here!"

Obediently, Darcy turned, even though they were headed totally off the road and into the desert. The Jeep had four wheel drive for a reason, right. "Alright, now what? And what the hell are we doing out here, anyway?"

"Well, I _was_ studying planetary formations on a molecular level, but then I discovered that there are stable gravitational fields cropping up all over the place in the area every four hours and seventeen minutes and if it's what I think it is, then life as we know it is going to change forever."

"Uh...are you talking about, like, wormholes?"

"I know, isn't it amazing?" Jane asked, and grinned. "Stop here!"

Darcy jerked to a halt, and got out when Jane did. Jane tossed her something that looked kinda sorta maybe like a tricorder from the Star Trek series, and told her to keep very still and let her know the second the reading got above 100.

"Sure thing." Seemed like an easy enough job.

The wind (and dust) were really starting to pick up, but Jane didn't look too concerned, so Darcy wasn't going to sweat it, either. She still had no earthly idea why the hell they were out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a sandstorm, but hey, it wasn't like she was doing anything else with her day, and it sure as hell beat studying. Besides, maybe Jane was in the middle of some sort of scientific breakthrough and Darcy was witnessing history. Maybe she'd be mentioned in a paper or article or maybe get to go on TV or they'd ask her to ride along in the spacecraft when they went out exploring other planets. That would be pretty cool. She'd never even been outside the United States, unless a few weekend trips to Baja counted, which it kinda didn't.

Although, truth be told, she'd rather be famous for appearing on Cupcake Wars than because of any hand wavy science reason, because cupcakes sort of ruled, and that was just a fact of life. She'd be an amazing judge. Sometimes she truly felt she missed her calling in life.

"Okay, done, did you _see_ that gravitational spike, this is _awesome_ , I can't wait to get back to the lab and start going through all the new data and hey, you wanna maybe order Chinese?"

Darcy glanced around, then pointed at herself. "Are you...did you mean me?"

Jane's grin was nothing short of impish, and brought out twin dimples. Because of course she was cute and smart with perfect skin _and_ dimples and the long eyelashes because Mother Nature was just that hilarious. "Well, I don't see anyone else here."

"Uh, sure. I like Chinese. I think people who don't like Chinese food are probably aliens or something." Which didn't explain why Jane wanted Darcy's company while eating, but maybe Jane was just lonely or something. She probably didn't have too much of a social life, what with the three doctorate degrees and all.

Although, if Darcy was that cute and that smart, no way she'd be spending her Saturday nights by herself eating ice cream and pondering the mysteries of the universe or how stars were made.

"Great." Jane smiled again, then bent back to her laptop and kept her nose buried in it the entire drive back to the abandoned diner building and Darcy's car.

"So, uh, where do you live anyway?" Darcy asked, once they climbed out of the Jeep. "Is this place like some sort of lab or something?"

"Kinda. I mean, yes, I do live here, but the front half is my lab space. I put in an ad for an intern-slash-roommate a couple of days back, but I haven't had any takers yet. Shame, too, because the place is way too big for one person and I could use the extra income to buy some more equipment, and I figured maybe someone at the university might want to help out with my research."

"Wait, really?" At Jane's blank look, Darcy continued. "That's why I was here. I saw the ad for a roommate and thought I'd check the place out. I didn't realize there was an internship involved, though. That wasn't in the ad I saw."

"Oh, huh. Maybe I forgot to mention that part." Jane blushed, super charming and bashful. "Sorry. I just assumed you were here about the internship or I wouldn't have started off ordering you around like that. I'm normally a lot more polite to strangers."

"It's okay, I'm a big go with the flow kinda gal," Darcy said, with a shrug. "So, were you still looking for a roommate or intern...?" She may as well get the college credit, right? Couldn't hurt, even if this wasn't her field.

"Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, are you sure you don't mind? It's sort of an odd space and you're not an actual science major, so..."

"Eh, political science is still science. And I like odd. I can be all boring and suburban after college when I get a real adult job. Which, by the way, I plan on never ever doing, so I think I'm safe," Darcy said, with a grin. "Besides, you seem like you could use someone around the place to drive you around and make sure you eat and put on actual pants."

Jane jerked her eyes down to her jeans, then let out a small sigh of relief. "You scared me."

"And you just totally proved my point, by the way. So, wanna give me the tour and explain to me exactly what it is you're doing before we order?"

"Sure."

"And just so we're clear, you do have a coffee machine in this place, right? Because if you don't, that's a deal breaker. You do not want to be around me in the morning if there's no coffee." Darcy'd used to have one of the cheapie Keurig knock-off things that only made one cup at a time, but one of her exes (Devon) had stolen it – procured it, whatever – to give it an upgrade because it tended to leak, and she hadn't seen it since. No real big loss on either the coffee machine or boyfriend front, but she was kinda getting tired of Starbucks every morning.

"Yeah, of course," Jane said in a very prim tone that belied the way her eyes were dancing. "I'm not a heathen."

"Hey, look at that, you made a joke. A serious science lady who makes jokes, I like it. I think you and me are gonna get along just fine," Darcy said, and linked elbows with Jane, steering her towards the front door. "Now we just gotta figure out if we wear the same size shoes, because I have a desperate need to borrow those seriously awesome boots you're wearing..."

She'd made a new friend _and_ scored an awesome off-campus place to live _and_ gotten an actual internship in the bargain. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to G for the last minute beta.
> 
> You can now find me on [Tumblr](http://brendaonao3.tumblr.com/). :)


End file.
